Richard Roundtree’s ‘Shaft’ Was a One-of-a-Kind Film Hero

The Big Picture

• Richard Roundtree’s portrayal of Shaft broke barriers and established him as an iconic Black hero in American cinema, resonating with both Black and white audiences alike.
• Shaft‘s success led to multiple sequels and a legacy that extended into the 21st century, with Samuel L. Jackson taking on the role in a reboot. Despite some diminishing returns, Shaft remains a prominent film character.
• Shaft‘s impact went beyond the screen as it brought Black culture to a national stage, reclaiming and subverting stereotypes. It paved the way for more Black artists and performers to tell their own stories and expanded the scope of Black stories told in American cinema.

During a time in American history when Black artists and performers were seldom being platformed by major studios in the film industry, Gordon Parks, a photojournalist and documentarian, adapted a detective novel by Ernest Tidyman into a film of the same name, Shaft. Recently departed, Richard Roundtree portrayed the titular detective in Parks’ 1971 film which, despite mixed reception from early critics, spoke to many different audiences and cemented Roundtree’s legacy as an icon of American cinema. The Blaxploitation genre was still in its infancy, with works from filmmakers such as Melvin Van Peebles and Ossie Davis establishing the style as a popular form for Black filmmakers.

Shaft was an early example of this kind of film that would immediately make a massive impression on pop culture. Through various sequels and a strong influence on future filmmakers, Shaft would cement itself as one of the most important films of the early 1970s, and a watershed moment for Black cultural visibility in media. Richard Roundtree’s prolific career puts into perspective how defining Shaft was for American cinema, and how much progress has been made in terms of the types of stories being told and who they are told by on the big screen.

Richard Roundtree Became America’s Premiere Black Hero

Leading men such as Sidney Poitier and Henry Belafonte had already graced the screen by the time Shaft was released in 1971, but Richard Roundtree’s turn as this bold, unwavering private eye was a novel performance for a Black actor at this time. As general audiences in decades following would look at characters like Batman and Spider-Man for heroic representation on screen, Black audiences found a hero of their own in Richard Roundtree’s Shaft.

There have been rumors that the character Shaft was originally written to be white in the film adaptation. This is not known with certainty, as the Hollywood legend largely spun out of a claim by Melvin Van Peebles that the success of his film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song led to Shaft being re-written as Black. The legitimacy of this assertion does not seem to hold up, as Shaft was already in production by the time Van Peebles’ film was released. Although Van Peebles’ work is deeply influential and important in the canon of Black filmmakers, and independent cinema generally, it is not known that Shaft, which was already adapted from a novel about a Black detective, was originally going to star a white actor.

What is known is that Gordon Parks was integral in the casting of Roundtree. He claims he met with Parks, who showed him a clipping of an advertisement that Roundtree appeared in as a model. Roundtree recalls Parks saying “We’re kind of looking for someone like, like this,” gesturing to the photo, unaware that he was speaking to the man himself. After a few rounds of auditions, Roundtree secured the part. His stylish persona, action prowess, and attitude made an immediate impression. Shaft had an iconic costume in the leather trench coat and turtlenecks, and Roundtree’s fashion sense is indicative of his similarly bold personality.

Shaft was a new kind of character for Black cinema, a smooth talker who was not afraid to ruffle anyone’s feathers and was forward in how he approached every interaction. Roundtree dominates every scene with his strong presence and establishes himself as the center of gravity that the rest of the film revolves around from his first screen appearance.

As is common with the popular heroic characters of the modern day, Shaft‘s warm reception and large box office returns ($12 million on a reported budget of $500,000) led to multiple sequels. Parks, who had a background in music, returned the following year to direct Shaft’s Big Score and composed the score himself. Although the film was not quite as successful as the original, another sequel titled Shaft in Africa was released in 1973. The third film was a box office flop and scared MGM Studios out of continuing the franchise. The rights were sold to CBS, where a television series aired with poor ratings and was subsequently canceled after seven episodes. Roundtree retired the character for many years after the series aired, but Shaft would not fade into obscurity.

Beyond Roundtree’s original run as the character, Shaft’s relevancy carried into the 21st century with a reboot starring Samuel L. Jackson. The reboot, also titled Shaft, was directed by John Singleton and released in 2000, acting as a loose sequel to the original film. Jackson portrays the original Shaft’s nephew, and he shares the same name and profession. This relation was retconned in a third film directed by Tim Story, inexplicably also titled Shaft, in 2019 which established Jessie T. Usher as Jackson’s son. Jackson was re-purposed as Roundtree’s son instead of his nephew in this entry. Roundtree returned for this 2019 installment, despite hesitation stemming from his dislike of the failed television series that ended his tenure in the role.

These later installments may have diminishing returns, but Singleton’s film was a worthy follow-up to the original. The 2019 sequel does honor Roundtree’s legacy, with all three Shafts’ appearing on-screen together for a third act that almost justifies this lackluster final installment in a trilogy of films that all share the same name. None of the subsequent films could live up to the quality of Parks’ original film, but Roundtree’s continued involvement with the franchise established Shaft as an ever-present film character who, while he may not sport brightly colored tights and fly around the world, is as iconic to some as a popular superhero figure.

Detective novels have been fertile ground for film adaptations for decades, but Shaft has become so ubiquitous after over fifty years in cinemas that the film exists almost entirely disassociated from the sourcebook. To give credit where it is due, Tidyman, the author who created the character, did co-write the script for the film adaptation alongside John D. F. Black, but Shaft’s iconic status in culture is not nearly as connected to the books as a similar character like Philip Marlowe who has received multiple film adaptations but is still strongly associated with Raymond Chandler. The character of Shaft is not a creation of Richard Roundtree, but the two will forever be thought of hand in hand because Roundtree’s performance is truly what allowed this character to jump out of the screen into a larger cultural conversation.

‘Shaft’ Broke Barriers For Cast, Crew, and American Culture at Large

In addition to Richard Roundtree’s lasting legacy, Shaft also led to the first Academy Award win for a Black film composer when Isaac Hayes won for his massively successful “Theme from Shaft.” Hayes was the third Black artist to win an Oscar in any category, following Hattie McDaniel for Gone with the Wind and Poitier for Lilies of the Field. Besides Hayes’ Oscar win being a historic moment, the song took on a life of its own by hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, winning two Grammy Awards, and being parodied, sampled, and licensed in countless songs, films, and advertisements.

Parks’ legacy in media spanned far beyond Shaft, as he worked in photojournalism for many years, closely covering the Civil Rights movement throughout his pre-filmmaking career. Parks had close ties to Civil Rights era figures and developed a relationship with Malcolm X that led to an invitation to be a godparent to his child. Parks’ child, Gordon Parks Jr. made marks on the film industry when he directed Superfly, a Blaxploitation film starring Ron O’Neal, who was up for the role of Shaft, which similarly made a notable impression and was eventually remade in 2018.

The warm reception set up continued success for Roundtree, Hayes, Parks, and others involved in the production, but Shaft‘s reach extended beyond itself. This was one of the first major American movies that spoke directly to Black audiences. The fashion, music, and language used in the film were present within Black communities, and now given a national stage in a way that delighted audiences seeing their own culture reflected on screen while introducing white viewers to aspects of Black culture they had likely never seen before. The film reclaimed, subverted, and confronted stereotypes general audiences had about Black culture. The impact of these choices in terms of iconography, costuming, lingo, etc. would reverberate throughout the Blaxploitation genre, and into a wider scope of American culture. Shaft was undeniably cool, and being cool is enough to transcend the limitations of demographic differences that might have hindered this movie from being a hit.

Shaft is pop filmmaking, but it was also part of a media revolution that saw the floodgates open for Black artists and performers who had been sidelined and exploited by an industry that was happy to exploit their talents without allowing them to maintain creative independence outside the narrow confines of an antiquated system. Shaft, and other films in this vein, enabled people like Parks and Roundtree to tell their own stories, and audiences connected with them.

Richard Roundtree was a film hero for an audience that had been underrepresented, and his legacy is ultimately not only his work but everything he inspired in the decades following Shaft first hitting the big screen. Over fifty years after John Shaft’s first film appearance, the Blaxploitation boom brought stars like Pam Grier into the limelight. The decades following would introduce voices like Spike Lee and John Singleton into the film industry, expanding the scope of Black stories told on screen. In recent years, Blaxploitation has taken on a new form. Independent cinema has continued to grow with works from filmmakers like Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler, and Boots Riley who employ a variety of genres and styles to tell compelling stories, some of which tackle sociopolitical issues in challenging ways while others can exist as purely entertaining fixtures of modern pop culture. The canvases these artists work on were built by the heroes of Black cinema history, and none were quite as bold and badass as Richard Roundtree’s Shaft.

Shaft is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

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